Charlbury Riverside Festival 2015

The Charlbury Riverside Festival is now in its 20th year, and the organisers claim that it's the largest FREE festival of its type in Oxfordshire. Charlbury returns on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th July 2015.

Line-up

In total more than 40 acts will be playing across three stages.

Main Stage

Saturday: The Dreaming Spires, Alphabet Backwards, Kioko, Zurich, Lowws, Calling Stanley, 2Tone All Ska’s, and The Turn.
Sunday: Leader, Balloon Ascents, Saedly Dorus & The Hoolie Band, Les Clochards, Mighty Redox, Larry Reddington, 15 String Trio, and Taylor Made Truth

Second Stage

Loud Mountains, Great Western Tears (featuring members of Swindlestock), The August List, Don Gallardo, Franc Cinelli, Knights Of Mentis, Peerless Pirates, Kid Calico & The Astral Ponies, and Bear On A Bicycle.

Sound of the Shire

Friday:The Jacques, The Turning, The Fireflies, Sheena, Dance À La Plage Zurich, Brightworks, and Larry Reddington.
Saturday: King B, Sam Taylor, Loyd Grossman & The New Forbidden, Alphabet Backwards, Zurich, Hope & Glory, Eyes for Gertrude , Debbie Bond, Satsangi, Leader, and Fourth Time Lucky
Sunday: The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band, Brickwork Lizards, The Standard, Dreaming Spires, The Wonder Beers, Toliesel, Les Clochards, Slainte, and Taylor Made Truth

The festival is famed for showcasing Oxfordshire’s music talent and this year is again inviting thriving independent record stores Rapture (in Witney) and Truck (in Oxford) to run the second stage. 

Riverside Fringe stage

The Fringe stage will also be returning this year – last year it featured everything from song and dance acts to performance poets and a contortionist. This year's line-up includes Saturday afternoon opens with octogenarian Gwyn Osborne, Mark Harme, The Four Wordsmen of the Apostrophe, and DJ Jude.

On site

Riverside is very much a family event, children can join in free music workshops with Salt Box Music, go on nature adventures with Little Wild Things, and try their hand at a range of creative crafts and activities. This year’s Riverside Festival will be welcoming mystical woodland folk, so if you have ever wanted to dress as an elf or fairy, a dryad, nymph, a goblin, troll or gnome, a wicked witch or kindly wizard, now’s your chance!

Witney’s Wychwood Brewery are creating another real ale for this year’s festival, but it needs a name. This year the Riverside Festival judging panel based in the Riverside office (known locally as the Rose and Crown) is looking for a name to fit in with the woodland folk theme and, appropriately, whoever comes up with the winning name gets a year’s supply (365 bottles) of the delectable Hobgoblin beer. This year’s Riverside beer is amber with a malty well hopped bitterness and a bitter-sweet fruity finish. The competition (open to anyone over 18 years-old) closes at midnight on Saturday 4 July. Email your suggestion to beer@riversidefestival.charlbury.com.

As well as three stages, there's always a smorgasbord of very reasonably priced food and drink stalls and a large kids' area with many free activities.

Despite the work involved and the cost of putting on an event of this size, the festival is still run entirely by volunteers and still free for all to enter. It's a truly family-friendly festival.

Restrictions

Like all festivals, festival goers cannot bring bottles and cans into the arena, but the two bars and other refreshment stalls will be selling drinks at very reasonable prices. No camping at the festival, see website for information on nearby camp sites and hotels. No dogs other than assistance dogs.

How to get there

Entrance to the Festival site is down Mill Lane, virtually opposite Charlbury railway station. The station is on the London Paddington to Hereford and Worcester line, 15 minutes from Oxford. On the Saturday there are buses from Oxford, Woodstock, Witney, Chipping Norton and Banbury to the centre of Charlbury, five minutes walk from the Festival.

Accommodation

This event does not offer camping. The area has local hotels and B&Bs and there is the Cotswold View Caravan and Camping Park on the outskirts of Charlbury.

More info

For more information, see the Charlbury Riverside Festival website.

This festival also programme the Riverside Stage at The Cornbury Music Festival at Great Tew on the first weekend of July.

More information will be here when available.

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